


Coming Home

by Gazyrlezon



Series: Arya and the Doctor [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Doctor Who
Genre: 's been ages since that first one, Gen, wanted to write something with this again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-05-02 07:43:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14539950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gazyrlezon/pseuds/Gazyrlezon
Summary: “I want to see my sister,” She didn’t make it into some great announcement or
wish; really, it wasn’t even a real suggestion for where they should go next. It was
just … a thought. A realisation, maybe, in the spur of the moment. Usually she
prepared her case before coming with a wish to the Doctor, spent time coming up
with clever comebacks for the cranky or just plain weird things he’d say if he
didn’t like the place she wanted to go, but this wasn’t like that. This had just
come out of the blue. Arya hadn’t thought about Winterfell and her family or
even Westeros for ages now; she was almost surprised that she still carried these
memories.





	Coming Home

“I want to see my sister,” Arya told him one day. They’d just left a planet with kind two-legged intelligent locusts whose society had been stuck in ancient norms that’d been imposed on them by invaders centuries prior, back in the comfort of the TARDIS. Deep in its innards there was a room fashioned a little like a Westerosi tavern, which was where they spent spare time together. She didn’t make it into some great announcement or wish; really, it wasn’t even a real suggestion for where they should go next. It was just … a thought. A realisation, maybe, in the spur of the moment. Usually she prepared her case before coming with a wish to the Doctor, spent time coming up with clever comebacks for the cranky or just plain weird things he’d say if he didn’t like the place she wanted to go, but this wasn’t like that. This had just come out of the blue. Arya hadn’t thought about Winterfell and her family or even Westeros for ages now; she was almost surprised that she still carried these memories. 

Sure, during the first few weeks aboard the TARDIS she’d been sentimental at time, had looked back to her home. But with time she’d just sort of grown out of them, as if she’d put them away and stored them in a box the way one would put childhood toys into a chest where they’d be forgotten by everyone but the maids who had the thankless task of keeping order in the castle’s halls. And she’d been glad of it, too; memories, she found, often hurt too much to be of use. Yet now, suddenly, Winterfell was back. Sansa was back, somewhere in her mind, as were Bran and Robb and Rickon and even her lord father and her lady mother. Of course, they’d been back before, and in those cases the Doctor would give her a day or two to rest while the pain passed. 

Except this time there wasn’t any. The hurt was still there, but the agony was gone. Somehow it had morphed back from pure silent screaming into something which she could bear. And now she wanted _back_. It was hard to get her mind around that. She’d pushed every thought of her old world away for so long, had never wanted to take the risk of certainty, certainty that Sansa really _was_ dead and that Bran was dead and that _Rickon_ was dead, had comforted herself that if she didn’t actually know then maybe they weren’t dead … 

How long had it been? Two years, three? Time outside didn’t matter to the TARDIS, and time spent aboard meant even less, so it was hard to be sure. Of course she could try and _ask_ the machine, but that would invariably result in an answer both unreliable and unlikely (she’d done it more than once before, and gotten everything from days to centuries). At times Arya suspected that the TARDIS just liked to make fun of her, and that somewhere in its endless shifting halls laughter drifted through the corridors. The only other way was to look at herself in a mirror and judge her own age and compare it to how old she’d been when she’d left Braavos, except Arya was horrible at judging people’s ages. 

But whatever the time, the thought was there. _I want to see my sister._ Why her sister? It seemed to her she was the one most likely to be alive. 

“Are you sure?” The Doctor’s question felt almost rhetorical. He sat across a heavy oakwood table (or, knowing the TARDIS, maybe the table just _looked_ like it was oakwood), sipping some beverage he called _coffee_ that he liked from a ceramic cup. She had a clay pot of hot milk and honey, a drink she’d liked even back when she’d been little. Of course she was sure. He made a nice show of being surprised, but she knew him too well for that. His eyes, young and age-old in the same instant, betrayed the truth: he’d been expecting it. Well, no wonder; he always wanted to go back to Gallifrey, too, so she guessed he understood. And in stark contrast to him, she might even have a chance. Winterfell had only burnt in space, but Gallifrey … Gallifrey had burnt in _time_ , wiped out across all of creation. 

“Okay,” he said. “I’m not sure where she is, but we’ll find her.” Arya stared at him. _Eventually. Searching the whole planet won’t be easy._

Gods, but he could be thick at times. Why would they have to search? Sansa was nobility, and heiress to a quarter of a continent. 

“We’ll do it like your wife would,” Arya told him, “we’ll just look at a history book.” 

  

* * *

  

The moon door was a strange piece of furniture. Ostensibly, it was just a door at the end of a corridor. No, more than that: it _was_ just a door at the end of a corridor. No trick, no hidden passageway, no magic. It was really just a door. And Sansa could feel the anxiety and terror running down her back like some icy stream of water just when she looked at it. 

_Just a door._ Maybe if she told herself that often enough, she’d believe it, too. _Just a_ _door._

Behind her the guards advanced, pressuring her into taking another step towards it. 

She wanted to scream. She wanted to argue, wanted to tell them all that they were wrong and that Petyr, Petyr wasn’t one aspect of a two-sided person, Petyr Bealish was a _lie_ , that Petyr Bealish never existed, or that if he had then he’d died a long time ago. There’d always only been Littlefinger, with the face of Petyr Bealish nothing more than a sweet mask hiding the monster behind it. Sansa had always prided herself on manners and ladylike restraint; _Courtesy is a lady’s armour,_ that saying was in her heart. And yet she wanted nothing more than a knife and the neck of Petyr Bealish and food for two to three days; she’d take a long time before ending it. But of course the end had already come. 

Little Robert Arryn, whom she’d named Sweetrobin, the Lord of the Vale, was dead. And Alayne had told them everything, through tears and pain, had told them of the life of Sansa Stark, of how she’d ordered the Maester to give the little lord sweetsleep, of how she hadn’t known that it was poison just as it was medicine … 

She’d never learnt if they’d believed a word of it. And now there was the door. 

Marillion had gone through it, she remembered that. Was that her, too, had she been nothing more than another singer for Littlefinger to play with? Probably. _Certainly_. And she’d known it, too, but convinced herself that if he liked her he’d keep her safe, that the mask of Petyr was at least partly the true man. 

But now it wasn’t. Littlefinger’s game had toppled and fallen apart, the man himself sentenced for his crimes — but not, she thought bitterly, for the ones that he had actually committed — and she’d been the one who gave little Robert Arryn that fatal final dose of sweetsleep. The trial had been done almost before it’d started; the Maester had stood witness, as had the Lord’s maids, and a sentence had been read. Now, in front of her, Mort threw the door open. 

A burst of icy cold wind greeted her, like a dagger that cut right down to her bones. 

That wasn’t what frightened her, though. What frightened her was that she’d have preferred the dagger. 

Behind her the few knights and servants and lords that’d made the trek up even in winter broke into a cheer. 

She guessed she should feel horror creeping over her, but she didn’t. The wind was too cold for her skin to notice anything else. Her gown, smeared and tattered as it was, fluttered in the wind like some forgotten banner that’d never been taken down, and Sansa could feel little crystals of ice forming on her skin even beneath the fabric. 

Someone shoved her further out. Sansa didn’t look to see who it was. 

She couldn’t. 

She _wouldn’t_. 

It was a strange moment for this, but suddenly she remembered her home. Winterfell, Arya, her lady mother, even her Lady, her direwolf. _A direwolves is not afraid._

It was pointless to try and will the fear away, so she didn’t try to hide it any longer. In that, at least, she could defy Littlefinger, the monster whom she’d counted as her friend: in this, she would be herself. 

Another shove. Just a few inches from her feet the ground fell away. 

They cheered and jeered her. 

Sansa took a deep breath. _They won’t push me out the door._

She stepped forwards before they could. For a seconds she worried that she’d hit her ankle at the sill, before noticing how ridiculous that was. 

The wind made her eyes water and tears run along her face. Sansa closed them. 

Suddenly, with the air rushing past her, everything was peaceful. A moment of tranquillity before the Stranger would come to take her. 

_The world is quiet here._

When she’d heard the sentence, she’d been haunted by the image of her aunt as Littlefinger’d pushed her out. But now that she fell herself, all she could think of was Winterfell. One day many years ago, when they’d all still been children, there’d been a thin layer of light summer snow covering the castle like a thin blanket. Even the battlements had seemed as if right out of a song. She’d sprung around the courtyard, letting fresh snow fall into her hair, unbothered when it hit her gown, not worried about the mud or anything else. And suddenly Arya’d been there and thrown a snowball at her, quickly joined by Robb and Bran and even Jon. She’d been furious, had thought that everything was ruined … and yet that was the only thing that would come to her mind now. 

She opened her eyes again. The wind bit them deep, but even so she could see a little. The Vale of Arryn stretched out beneath her as she’d seen it a hundred times before from the battlements of the castle, except of course it wasn’t the same; the Eyrie was high, after all, and reaching the ground took a long, long time. It felt realer, _closer_. Well, she _was_ closer, of course, but that wasn’t it. 

And directly below her were the rocks and stones and cliffs. She wondered if she could determine where she’d land. There were ugly spikes and hidden passageways, crumbling cliffs and cracking crags, there were two of the three gates that fortified and defended the way up to the seat of the Arryns — she guessed the third was already above her — stretching down along the mountainside, in grey, in black, in something that was almost white; here and there were lonely scraps of vegetation, a tree here, a bush there, a patch of grass straddling even the highest peaks. 

And suddenly she knew where she would land. Beneath her was a small patch of grass so green it was almost blue, where she’d land and her body would shatter; without knowing how she could be sure she was certain that this was where she’d hit the ground and shatter, where her blood would water the grass and where she’d maybe leave a skull to be found a hundred or a thousand years from now, overgrown, by some lonely mountaineer. Strangely, that thought bothered her not in the least. 

Except when she got closer it didn’t seem like grass at all. It grew bluer and bluer the closer she came, and finally she saw that it wasn’t grass at all, that it wasn’t even part of the mountainside; instead it seemed to stand free in the air, unattached to any kind of support. Floating. Like a box that flew between the peaks of stone around it. 

Before she had time to think much about it she’d already reached it. It fascinated her so much that she didn’t even close her eyes or brace for the impact. Then there was a flash of something that was bright orange and red and yellow, and then something like a long, narrow tunnel that she fell down. Strangely, she could feel herself slowing down. 

That didn’t make any sense. 

When the tunnel ended she fell as if in time itself had slowed down, into a tank of water beneath her that she saw just moments before splashing into it. Panic receded quickly; she’d learnt how to swim in the hot springs of Winterfell long ago, and she made it to the rim of that tank in a few quick strokes. Climbing out the water was harder; the springs hat narrowed out more like a beach than a basin, and she’d never been much of a climber. 

“Ah, there you are, glad you found the swimming pool.” 

And with that someone’s hand gripped her arms and drew her up to the floor outside the pool. Gushes of water came pouring out of her hair to run down her gown which was already soaked through. She turned to see who had spoken, and found herself staring. The man who stood there looked unlike anyone whom she’d ever met. Thin, lanky, young, but in clothes she couldn’t have even imagined before she’d seen them, his hair done weirdly to one side in a way that looked like it should just fall down everywhere but didn’t. His eyes didn’t seem to know where to look, either; he fidgeted more than even Rickon had ever done. 

“Hello Sansa,” he said, and ran off to a door she hadn’t seen before, but stopped before he reached it. “Wait! I _did_ forget, now I’ve lost Arya’s bet, ah, oh well, anyways, let’s do this again —” he ran back up to her. His pace at speaking was as astonishing as his pace at running, and both were equally uncoordinated. 

“Hello Sansa,” he began again, “This must all be terribly confusing, I’m sure, but —” 

“Arya?” 

“Ah, yes, your sister, I was just coming to that, she’s back in the control room, steering the TARDIS — we would’ve done this the other way round, but she always gets lost when she walks too far down the corridors — but I guess the short story is: not dead, fled to Braavos, bumped into me and decided she’d rather be someplace else than Braavos. Oh, also got involved in some weird cult, but you’ll have to ask her about that if you want to know … actually better you don’t, she doesn’t really enjoy talking about it … ahm … this sentence really got away from me, what was it that I wanted to say …” 

The art of political machinations, Sansa had learnt, sometimes involved pretending to understand when one didn’t. She smiled graciously, focused on the _not dead_ that the man had said and ignored the rest of it. 

“Ah, yes, introductions. Sorry, how rude of me. I’m the Doctor, just the Doctor, and no, I don’t have time to elaborate, you’re Sansa, and _these_ —” he’d run back to the door again and grabbed something from behind which he threw at her “— are drier clothes than the ones you’re wearing.” 

Sansa suddenly became intensely aware of how tight her clothes clung to her body. The clothes which the man — the Doctor — had thrown she missed entirely, but before they splashed into the pool a platform grew out of nowhere and caught them. 

“Thanks lovely,” she heard the Doctor say, but he didn’t seem to be talking to her. Sansa looked to see if anyone else was there but couldn’t see anyone, and then he’d already closed the door to give her space and privacy to change. 

The clothes were strange, only bearing a superficial similarity to what she was used to, and Sansa was not at all sure how to put them on. She didn’t have a towel, either, so she used one of her new clothes to dry herself. Another one of them was sufficiently close to being a tunic so that it fit around her body, and a third like some slim and too-short version of breeches. No gown or dress, though, and she’d probably just violated any conventions that might reasonably apply to these clothes. Well, it wasn’t like she was at court. 

When she was done she followed the Doctor through the door. 

  

* * *

  

Keeping the TARDIS steady was an ardours task; Arya had one hand on a lever while the other danced over the few buttons that she was familiar with. Generally, she was on good enough terms with the machine, and could normally keep her in place if not actively fly her herself. Unfortunately, if one was on good terms with the TARDIS she thought it acceptable to make little jokes, and the TARDIS being what it was those would frequently knock the entire crew off their feet. There was a reason why Arya didn’t wander off to deep into on her own; oddly, the one thing that the time machine severely lacked was a sense of timing. 

She hoped very much that she wouldn’t have to use the typewriter. She knew little about typewriters, of course, but the little that she did indicated that one wasn’t really supposed to wire one up to the control unit of a time machine. The Doctor couldn’t explain it either; mostly, Arya had give up on ever understanding what key to press there. 

And anyways, she didn’t have time to figure anything out _now_. She felt jumpy. True, she’d wanted to see her sister, had longed to see her family for years, but now that the moment was here … well, actually, the moment had already passed. The first glimpse she’d gotten of Sansa in years had been of her falling through the control room at what must’ve been a hundred miles an hour, down towards the swimming pool. Of course it must’ve been something like that; anything else would’ve been an insult to the sense of flamboyantness of both the TARDIS and her thief. 

What was she supposed to _say_? Hey, d’ya still recognize me? I’m now the same age that you are, by the way, because I’ve been living in a time machine for I-don’t-know-how-long, but I guess it must’ve been two years at least? 

The door opened just as the room made another jump. When Sansa stepped out Arya was hidden behind the column, furiously hammering on buttons that didn’t quite do what she wanted. 

“But I fell down a tunnel that must’ve been a mile long, how can we be back at the door?” 

Hearing her sister’s voice felt unreal, like a dream. She’d have loved to jump into her arms right away, but she knew the Doctor would want to do the whole _it’s bigger on_ _the inside_ -routine first. And really, she wanted to see Sansa’s reaction to that, too. 

“Ah, TARDIS, you see? Doesn’t care much about anything so silly as time, so she doesn’t care much about space either and just sort of bent it your way to prevent you dying, we don’t want that after all, so ahm, anyways, this is the console room, welcome to the TARDIS, again, and _also_ —” 

The Doctor’s unending stream of words, his way to be nervous. Arya leaned around the column and saw the Doctor open the double-door that led outside. 

“… enjoy the view.” 

Sansa stared outside, where the Eyrie still hung miles above them. Arya shifted a few feet away from the consoles so that she could see outside as well. In fact, this was a strange sight even for her; the Doctor didn’t often put the TARIDS in any situation where she wasn’t upright, claiming she didn’t like it much. _Thinking of things the TARDIS doesn’t like, I_ _should probably get back —_

The room shuddered. Arya managed to grab a handrail in time, and the Doctor had little trouble steadying himself, but Sansa very nearly fell over. Half a hundred lights flashed on the console, seemingly at random. Arya pressed the first button she got her hands on, but it was evidently the wrong one; the renewed turbulence only shook the room further. The doors fell shut, and for a moment she heard Sansa scream. The history book they’d used to find her flew through the room and hit one of the monitors. Countless loose and blackened pages tumbled out of it, making a weird sort of a snowstorm fill the air. 

“Doctor!” 

“Sorry!” Arya wasn’t sure if the apology was meant for her or the TARDIS, but at least he’d noticed it now. 

“I could really use some help here!” 

“Oh, right.” She’d never quite figured out how he managed to climb the stairs up to the console no matter how much the room shook, but he was with her in barely a second. She guessed a lifetime of a millennia must provide ample time for practice. A few moments later the TARDIS had calmed down again. 

The room settled. Sansa climbed back on her feet. “What’s happening?” She sounded as lost as lost can be, staring at the Doctor in wait for an answer, and then — 

“ _Arya!_ ” 

And suddenly Arya knew what to say. “Just let it all sink in. Human brains, they’re quite good at ignoring events they can’t comprehend. You’ll be fine in a moment.” 

Then she couldn’t hold herself back any longer. Arya ran down the steps and pressed her sister close. She’d half intended to jump into a hug, the way she’d used to with Jon or Robb, except she’d noticed at the last moment that if she were to do that she’d probably throw Sansa over. With her two or three years extra they were almost of a height now. 

Strange, really, the kind of thoughts that popped into her head to stop her from just crying. “I missed you,” she sobbed, and she felt her sister shaking with tears, too. 

“Hey!” the Doctor’s voice interrupted them. “That thing you just said, that sounded like a quote, a clever quote, why don’t I know that one? Who said that? Who … wait, did _I_ say that? Arya, you _have_ to tell me —” 

Arya held up a hand, and for once the Doctor shut up. She pressed her sister closer. Or, she would’ve, had that been possible. 

When they finally separated, she turned to back to the Doctor. 

“You did say that. Well, almost. I rephrased it a little.” 

“You _rephrased_?” He made a good show at being insulted. 

“Well, I had to correct the grammar, at least.” 

“… oh.” 

“It was almost the first the you said to me when we first met. I thought it might be appropriate if someone’d repeat it here and now, you know.” 

“Yeah, quite possibly. Sansa! Just let it all sink in for a moment, human brains are quite good at ignoring events that they can’t comprehend while they’re happening. You’ll be fine.” 

Sansa, who’d stared at the whole exchange with a sort of overburdened bafflement on her face managed to give a short nod. 

“See?” said the Doctor “You’re getting there.” 

It was quiet for a bit after that. 

And then Sansa spoke: “You’ve grown a lot, Arya.” 

“Yeah,” she admitted. “This thing here —” she gestured vaguely around herself “— it travels through time. Well, and space, obviously. It’s been two years longer for me than for you since we last saw us.” _Since father was murdered, and since you stood on that platform._ The thought came sudden. It irritated her, and she pushed it away; there was time for that later. 

Sansa, meanwhile, looked more confused than ever. “Does any of this make any sense at all?” 

Arya considered a moment before answering. “Not really,” she had to admit. “But you get used to dealing with it after a while.” 

Her sister’s face remained doubtful. Just that moment moment a page of the book flew into her face. It was so covered in black ink that not a word was readable. 

“What’s that?” 

“A history book,” Arya told her, searching the floor for the rest of it, “or, what’s left of it, anyways. _The Complete History of the Covenant of the Seven Kingdoms, Volume_ _forty-seven, from Robert’s Rebellion to_. It’ll be written in about a millennia or so, and it’s _laughably_ precise. Every last detail you could possibly want to know about our whole age is in there somewhere, except —” She waved vaguely at the Doctor. 

“What?” Sansa evidently hadn’t understood. Now that her sister was back in her life, Arya suddenly noticed all the habits she’d picked up from the Doctor; half of her speaking seemed to just consist of vaguely waving hands around. 

The Doctor took over for her. “I burnt out all pages concerning later events, so your sister wouldn’t _peak._ ” 

“Here, see?” Arya had found the page she’d been looking for; it had a big fat marking on it. “According to one theory, Sansa Stark was abducted by Lord Bealish and taken to the Seat of House Arryn under the guise of his bastard daughter, Alayne Stone. However, this theory holds little merit as Alayne Stone was later sentenced to death by the Moon Door (see also volumes 24,25 and 28 for the early history of House Arryn and the infamous Moon Door), and Sansa Stark reappeared (see volumes 48 for her life during the War of the Wall, as well as volume 49 for her later life) —” 

The Doctor had blackened the rest. 

Sansa stared at her. “Volumes 53 to 57?” 

“I said it was very precise.” 

“And War of the Wall?” 

“No idea. I guess we’ll eventually figure that one out. Or we’ll just fake the records.” 

  

* * *

  

Not much later they all sat around the oakwood table in the not-quite-tavern of the TARDIS where this’d all started, the Doctor with his usual strange black beverage, Arya with her cup of hot milk and honey, and Sansa with a cup of iced one. There was also a lemon cake between them. Arya had insisted on one, so they’d made a short stop in an Earth bakery to buy one, but Arya’d forgotten to say _muffins_ instead of _cake_ , so now they had a huge bread-like thing that you could cut slices off with a knife, not the small tarts that you ate in a bite or two. 

It was still good, though, even Sansa admitted that. 

They didn’t talk much. For now, the two sisters were content just knowing that the other was there, was alive, and for once the Doctor recognised the situation and kept quiet as well. Arya wondered if the Doctor had any hope of that, finding someone from his old home. He always said that he was the last of the Time Lords, but cut that really be? If she’d learnt one thing then that the universe was large and ridiculous and in general rather confusing (and possibly _itself_ confused), and she couldn’t imagine what kind of war that must’ve been, to wipe out an entire species and leave nothing but one man behind, not just in space but also in time. 

She wondered how the Doctor must feel, seeing her reunited with someone from _her_ home. That’d been one of the things they had in common, the home that’d burnt down with them alone left, and now that was gone. She remembered how it’d felt, but the Doctor couldn’t know how _she_ felt now. Suddenly sadness struck her, not for herself but the Doctor who’d have to stay alone, wouldn’t he? 

And … 

“Do you think Bran might still be alive?” Strangely, it was Sansa who asked the question that Arya had wanted to ask; she’d beat her to it by a mere moment. “Everyone thought _I_ was dead, but here I am. Do you think?” There was a desperation in her voice that Arya knew all too well. 

She turned to look at the Doctor, who was sipping on his coffee. At last he put the cup down. 

“I’m not sure,” he said, his voice quieter than she’d ever know it except when he talked about Gallifrey. “but I guess it must be in the history book. Should I look it up?” 

  

* * *

  

It was a crisp-cold day in late autumn, and somehow they all knew that it was time to say goodbye. No one said anything aloud (except Rickon, who ran around the courtyard of Winterfell, a wooden sword in his hands, screaming that no one’d ever breach the walls again), but Sansa’s whole demeanour showed she knew, Bran gave her a look when they met in the Great Hall that morning. He’d changed, somehow, but he’d also stayed the same. She’d have to get used to that — she’d never even seen him awake after he’d fallen from the Broken Tower, much less before his trip to the Gods — and yet, he was still _Bran_. He even still joked about becoming a knight someday, though he said it with a wisp of sadness now. And he admired the Doctor. North of the Wall, the Old Gods had taught him well, and he alone was able to follow more than half of what the Doctor always said about time travels and the TARDIS. 

The Doctor had even offered to take him with him for a while, let him see the universe. 

Bran had refused, gently but surely. That’d amazed Arya more than anything; she’d never met anyone who neither wanted to go on the TARDIS nor was terrified by the simple idea. But Bran was; and it seemed he just wasn’t interested. _My_ _place is here, in Winterfell,_ he’d said, and with that the matter had been dealt with. 

She didn’t know if Bran had seen the Doctor, but she found Sansa out in the courtyard, giving a tearful goodbye and thank-you to the Time Lord who stood at the newly rebuilt gates. (Ostensibly, the TARDIS might just be a vehicle for travelling, but for those who knew her and whom she liked she did a lot more, too. It hadn’t helped the geometry of Winterfell, though; if anything, it was even more of a maze now, and it didn’t help that some corridors were spatially impossible and made it impossible to draw a map) 

Arya walked up to them and waited until Sansa had thanked the Doctor for everything once again. Then she gave her sister a nod, looked at the Doctor, and together they walked out the gate and down the short stretch of the Kingsroad through the Winter Town all the way to the first forays of the wolfswood. A foot or so of snow covered the ground, making walking difficult; and by the time they’d reached the TARDIS Arya felt as if her legs had frozen solid. 

Still, she would not have had it any other way. 

It was strange to see the blue box here, in an area that was equally familiar as it’d become estranged. Two lives that’d collided into one. 

When the Doctor reached for the doors she held him back. 

“You could stay, you know. My home’s rebuilding. It could be your home, too.” 

For a moment the Doctor stared at her, his eyes locked on hers, and there she could see his age again, that endless tunnel of time behind those eyes that looked young but weren’t. But as desperate as she was for him to say yes, he’d say, she’d known what his answer would be even before she’d asked the question. He broke eye contact first, fidgeting a little, the way he always did. 

“Naw.” She’d never heard his voice like this before, she realised. It sounded sad, she thought. Pained, almost. “I’m the mad man with my box. Always will be. Even Gallifrey couldn’t hold me forever, and with it gone …” 

He stepped into the TARDIS. Through the doors Arya could see the orange explosion of shiny copper that was the control room. She’d miss that room, she realized, as ridiculous as that was. 

“I know.” _I’ve been there, too._ “But I had to try.” 

He smiled at her, then, and she at him. He raised his arm to wave, and she waved back. Then the doors of the TARDIS creaked closed, and for the first time in a very long while Arya wasn’t inside the machine when it took off. She’d almost forgotten how it looked. She concentrated on the sight, the sound, everything; she wanted to soak it into her mind and never forget it. 

When the box had disappeared, she slowly made her way back to the walls of Winterfell. 

  

* * *

  

Three weeks later a raven came from Castle Black, bringing word that the Others had been defeated. But in the very next sentence it corrected itself; the Others hadn’t been defeated as much as they’d just _disappeared_ , gone Gods knew were, but some strange man had turned up a day afterwards and said they should send his regards to Arya Stark. 

She smiled. 

The letter was signed _Jon Snow, Lord Commander._

She was home. 

And maybe, she thought, Jon would come home, now, too. 

But before that she had a few records to fake. After all, a millennia from now someone still had to judge this war important enough to write a book about it. 

**Author's Note:**

> I know it took me a year, but I _did_ eventually write another thing with Arya as a companion. There's still not nearly enough crossovers between these two, at least not for my taste, but it turns out these are seriously hard to write (at least for me); it's surprisingly hard to find scenarios that "fit" those two, and I don't just want to write about some random Who-style adventure with what's basically an OC who's called Arya but otherwise lacks connections to the actual character.
> 
> Anyways, I hope you liked it!


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